This map gives you a sense of our overall journey on this tour. (As with all pics on the blog, you can click for a larger image!)
2. PC030123 (Picture forthcoming!)
Our base camp for the first night. This was my first time sleeping in a hammock. It’s surprisingly comfortable if you orient yourself on a diagonal. But I still didn’t get much sleep either night of the tour, probably because of a combination of noise, insects and the occasionally horrifying and vivid nightmares induced by my malaria medication. This time I was dreaming I was living the movie “High Tension.” In case you haven’t seen it, it’s one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. It was presented to me this summer as a “French lesbian horror film,” so I naturally expected some bad acting, lots of gloomy imagery and some gratuitous girl-on-girl action. I did not expect such an unbelievably terrifying and heart-pounding experience of watching his crazed maniac chase one member of a French family after another through a desolate forest in the middle of the night, each one meeting a more gory demise than the one before. (You must see this film if you have not already!) Anyways, imagine reliving this film in an incredibly vivid dream, then waking up to find yourself sleeping in a hammock in the pitch black, fully exposed, deep in the jungle many miles from the nearest road. Then trying to convince yourself it was just a movie, but realizing the anacondas you’ve been warned about aren’t… ;-)
But I survived the first night and we headed off yet again for the 2-hour journey further upriver to our second base camp and the trail head for Angel Falls.
That’s Tony, our guide, looking back at the camera. You can also see some of the dozens of waterfalls spilling off the tepuys throughout this region.
Hiking up to Angel Falls
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